


Different Tastes

by chibinecco



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Cooking, Fluff, Food, M/M, seriously just a little oneoff idea that grew bigger than I'd expected XP, silliness, unrepentant cuteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 06:56:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9423911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibinecco/pseuds/chibinecco
Summary: Moving in together is easy, almost seamless. Except for that one, little, unexpected snag.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic operates under the headcanon that Yuuri and Viktor tend to speak English together, but it's not quite the native language for either of them.

The hardest part about moving in together, living together wasn't anything Yuuri had originally expected it to be.

When they first moved in together, there'd been a brief negotiation of furniture, another for divvying up the chores. They split rent and utilities straight down the middle, and both of them were successful enough in their field that other incidentals didn't seem particularly important. They were also remarkably well organized and driven, so maintaining these boundaries past the initial honey-moon phase of affection was just… easy.

This.…. Wasn't.

\--

"Viktor….?"

"Hmmm?" 

"What… am I looking at?" Yuuri asked, unable to look away from the giant simmering pot of…. Lividly _purple_ , chunky liquid sitting on their stove. He gave it a tentative whiff and jerked back. It wasn't particularly offensive, but certainly pronounced. Very unfamiliar, not quite like potatoes. A potato-adjacent odor.

"Oh," Viktor chuckled, padding into the kitchen and wrapping his arms around Yuuri and settling his head on the other man's shoulder. "That's borscht. I'm making it for dinner."

" _That's_ borscht?" Yuuri yelped, spinning out of Viktor's arms and backing away from both his freshly insane boyfriend and the mystery-something that definitely couldn't be _eaten_ "That's…" he pointed frantically at the steaming concoction, which Yuuri now noticed had little green flakes bubbling along the top. " _not_ some kind of home-remedy cleaning… thing?"

Viktor just laughed, waving away Yuuri's concerns. "Yes, I'm sure. It's a traditional European stew made from beets."

"Beets…."

"Yes. Beets. And potatoes, and I've added some spiced sausage because I know you like pork." Viktor smiled fondly, beckoning Yuuri closer. "Come on, try a taste." He wrapped one arm gently around Yuuri's hips and picked up a spoon to scoop a small taste into a spoon which he blew on gently. "The beets won't be fully cooked for a while yet, but there's plenty of flavor in the broth already."

Yuuri gave Viktor his best skeptical look, but braced himself and opened his mouth obediently. When Viktor fed him the small sample, Yuuri let it move around his mouth briefly before swallowing amiably. "Slightly bitter… Very umami. It's… different," he allowed. "Needs salt."

"You add salt later, when it's more cooked," Viktor said, grinning at the growing calm on Yuuri's face. Though he wasn't completely mollified yet, he clearly didn't think the food was actively poisonous anymore. "What's umami? I'm not familiar with this word."

"I don't think there's an English equivalent. It means that… full, richness in a flavor. It has something to do with glutamates." Yuuri shrugged.

"Ah, yeah." Viktor scooped a second spoonful, holding Yuuri close as he tasted the soup himself this time. "It's coming along nicely, just wait until the beets are fully cooked and you put the sour cream on."

"You eat this with soured cream?!" Yuuri asked, stiff and anxious at this new baffling development. "I… why would you eat spoiled cream? I would you even keep cream so long it spoils?"

Viktor burst out laughing, nearly dropping the spoon. "Not 'soured,' just 'sour.'" He pressed a kiss to Yuuri's cheek, under much protest and squirming. "It's called smetana in Russian. It's a dairy product, kind of like yogurt, but more acidic. It really opens up the flavors in borscht," he promised.

Yuuri wasn't so sure, still squirming to get away.

"Try it?" Viktor asked, putting on his best 'pretty please' face he had. "For me? Once it's ready? If you don't like it, we'll order something in. But… try it?"

Yuuri huffed as he stopped squirming, crossing his arms as he thought it over, though really, there wasn't much to think over. As unappetizing this dish looked and sounded when described, the sample Viktor had given him was fine. "I guess it won't _kill_ me…"

"Vkusno!" Viktor beamed, pressing a quick kiss to Yuuri's cheek and dragging him back out of the kitchen towards the livingroom couch where he fully intended to get his cuddle on. "You'll have to make something Japanese for me to try too sometime. Katsudon and ramen are so delicious."

Pressing a kiss to Viktor's nose, Yuuri smiled at his fiance. "Yeah, I think that's a fair trade."

Viktor's tastes in food were weird, and more than a little disquieting, but bracing himself for odd cuisine every so often wasn't a deal breaker….. probably.

\--

Viktor swallowed nervously as he watched Yuuri puttering about the kitchen prepping their dinner. "This is…. Traditional?" He asked hesitantly, prodding the large bowl of ice with a smaller serving bowl full of wheat-brown noodles.

"Mm-hmm." Yuuri nodded cheerfully, stirring a rubbery slice of seaweed into a shallow pot of water.

"But… it's going to be cold…"

"Well, yeah, that's the point," Yuuri laughed, glancing over with an adoring smile on his lips, and Viktor melted a little inside. He'd suck it up. He could do this. For Yuuri, he would eat the weird, gritty-looking noodles and…. Solid block of uncooked tofu.

"And the tofu doesn't have anything done to it?" he leaned around Yuuri to look at the towel-wrapped lump atop a plate on the counter. Apparently, when you didn't properly cook tofu, you had to dry it out first by 'pressing' it? Viktor wasn't really sure.

"Well, I have to put the toppings on," Yuuri said with another chuckle. He turned away from his work to take Viktor's hands, leaning up and kissing his lips gently. "I'm so excited to share this with you. Katsudon is my favorite, of course, but… This is so tasty, 'vkusno,'" he teased. "You'll see."

Viktor bit his lip, nodding carefully. "How much longer? Should I set the table?"

"Yeah, that sounds good. It won't be much longer, just need to finish mixing up the sauce and we'll be good to go." Giving Viktor's hands another quick squeeze.

"Okay…. Okay," Viktor said, more to himself as he focused on getting plates and utensils. He paused at the drawer, asking with hesitant dread in his mind. "Should I be getting forks? Or chopsticks?"

"Hm? Oh, chopsticks. Are traditional," Yuuri added. "But you can get out forks if you'd rather."

Viktor hesitated another moment before grabbing two sets of chopsticks and pushing the drawer closed with a sigh. Forks would be more familiar and comfortable, but if he was going to do this, he should at the very least do it right.

"You can take the noodles out now if you want," Yuuri called distractedly from the other room.

Once the table was fully set to the best of Viktor's abilities, including two plates, utensils, bowl of noodles, two water glasses, tea cups and freshly-brewing pot of matcha, Viktor gave up on finding anything else to keep him occupied until Yuuri brought out the rest of the meal. Slumping into his chair dejectedly, he resigned himself to simply wait.

Thankfully, Yuuri didn't leave Viktor to stew for too long, coming out with a plate in one hand and small pitcher in the other.

Viktor had expected the worst thing he'd need to deal with was going to be raw tofu. He was sorely mistaken. "What's _that_?!" He asked, doing his level best to keep the horror out of his voice as he pointed at the wedges of what he could only describe as 'mushy, transparent, boiled eggs.'

"Preserved duck egg!" Yuuri chirped excitedly. And then he _poured runny brown syrup_ of indiscriminate origin all over the entire thing from the little pitcher and Viktor just about jumped out of his chair.

"That's… hnn," Viktor trailed off into a whimper. He looked up at Yuuri to see if the other man was joking but…. The way the other man's eager smile was slowly fading and an embarrassed flush was starting to replace it was evidence enough. "Shit, no, wait-" Viktor said in a rush, waving his hands out at Yuuri to get his attention.

"We can… try something else. If you don't like it, it's okay. I guess seiki no tomago isn't for everyone…"

"Yuuri, no." Viktor hurried up and around the table to wrap his arms around Yuuri's shoulders, settling along the side of his chair, practically sitting in Yuuri's lap. "That's not what I meant at all," he said, tipping Yuuri's face up to look at him. "It's…. new." Viktor looked over at the various dishes on the table. Suddenly, his own anxiety and hesitancy seemed ridiculous. It was food. Yuuri ate it all the time, apparently. Or used to at least. "It's different, and unlike anything I've ever really seen before, and that makes it a little strange, but strange isn't bad. I'd never had a dish with raw egg stirred into it before I had Katsudon at Hasetsu, but that's now one of my very favorite dishes."

Yuuri breathed a gentle sigh of relief and smiled up at Viktor.

Viktor kissed him. What else was he supposed to do in the face of all that adorableness?

"Alright. I'm sorry I got worked up over nothing-"

"It's not nothing," Viktor insisted, leaning their foreheads together. "It's important to you, and I was being an ass. You tried my borscht the other night, and that's _so_ normal to me. I shouldn't have treated this as anything different."

"I guess…. Borscht was pretty weird," Yuuri said thoughtfully. "I'd heard of it, but I'd never seen it, and it…. Wasn't what I expected." Yuuri wrapped his arms around Viktor's hips, pulling him in a bit closer, so he wasn't perched so precariously. "Do you want to move back to your seat? Or stay here to eat? Because either way, I'm starving."

With a laugh, Viktor clung to Yuuri in a happy hug, laying his head on the other man's shoulder and kissing his jaw. "Okay. I'll move back. I'm sure, whatever this is, I'll love it. After all, I love you."

"Oh my god, you ham," Yuuri laughed, half-shoving Viktor out of his lap. "Get back in your seat, and let's eat."

\--

That was hardly the last time strange 'traditional' dishes caught them off guard, and it didn't always turn out to be a pleasant experience for everyone involved. The time Viktor tried to help Yuuri get over his cold with 'anchous' paste spread on toast was the first and last time anchous was ever allowed in the house, but they worked it out. One way or another.

**Author's Note:**

> Few notes:  
> -Borscht is often more reddish than purple, especially before you add sour cream, but it all depends on the beets. I've had borscht come out boring stew-brown; I've seen it so red it looks like pasta sauce. But sometimes, it comes out this weird-ass purple color that should not be seen by man on this natural earth. XP  
> -You don't press soft Tofu. You wind up squishing it and just making a mess. You just blot it dry. Yuuri explained how to press tofu for other recipes and Viktor just got confused XP  
> -Anchous = Anchovy; and I have no idea if Anchovy paste on toast is a supposed cold-remedy anywhere XD but I've heard of other STRONG-smell themed remedies and figured there's probs at least one family out there that practices this XD
> 
> This was pseudo-inspired by personal experiences. XD Different foods from different cultures don't always translate like you'd expect ^.^ Hope you enjoyed ^.^


End file.
